


In Dark Places

by Cakepopart



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen, Magic, Post-Canon, day one: Changes, the wood - Freeform, uprooted_week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 05:17:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12474328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cakepopart/pseuds/Cakepopart
Summary: Talia is a 14 year old village girl who runs away from home and meets a witch's apprentice





	In Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is written for the first day of Uprooted Week 2017 and in my time zone I made it!! 
> 
> It started out as me trying to write a quick, historical style synopsis of villager's relationship with the wood over time. What I got is a 4k OC fic. Enjoy!!

Girls in my village are taught two things before all others: one, the secret method of weaving cloth to be smooth as water that is unlike anything else made in Polnya, and, two, the history of the wood and how we came to live in it. The first supports us, the second keeps us safe. 

The secret of the cloth starts in the making of thread and contains generations of knowledge passed from woman to woman. It has never been shared outside our family (though it is old enough that “family” is a loose term. We all know here and we are not all related in any common sense of the word). It is always done by hand and always in the sun. 

The history of the wood is long and sad. It is also documented elsewhere, by more knowledgeable hands than mine. Our own history is recorded elsewhere as well but since that belongs, in part, to me, I will tell a little. When my grandmother’s grandmother was a child, we fled a bad king’s selfish war by sea and followed a prophecy to this land. When we arrived, no one lived in the woods. It held dark and powerful memories for all those who lived near by. They warned us not to go there but they also would not let us stay. We had to live somewhere and so into the woods we went. 

We met the witch almost as soon as we entered the woods. She is the same witch, they say, that we know today, though her apprentice was different. Certainly she has not changed in my lifetime the way other adults have and mother swears she has not changed in hers either. She acted as she does now, too, they say. All smiles, encouragement, and guidance, then suddenly dire warnings thrown in casually as if they were everyday. Maybe they were, for her. She lives in deep and walks in the places that still hold their Darkness, even after generations. 

She helped us find a place to start a town and warned us against felling the trees. The one man who did drowned soon after. Of course, no one knew if those things were really related but no one wanted to find out. From his time to mine, that’s the only tree any of us have cut down. It also made certain that we listened to her other warnings. A few have gotten lost and not returned but all in all, thanks to her, we know where is safe and where to avoid without too much unfortunate trial and error. 

It wasn’t until my 14th year that we met the wizard known as Dragon and of that, I am uniquely qualified to tell. That was the year my eldest sister turn 18 and my family began to discuss my future. How it works here is that the eldest child, girl or boy, takes over the household at 18. Parents stay (and stay in charge, really, in everything but name for several more years), grandparents stay, younger siblings stay only until they are also 18. At that point they have to either be invited into another household to become a part of that family or start their own household. Unless the eldest fell in love with someone else who was the eldest and then the they decide who moves and the second takes over the empty stop when they turn 18. 

As you can tell, 18 is a big deal. We were almost sure my sister would marry the eldest son of a farmer that she had been given special attention at dances since she was my age, so wouldn’t really be in charge for long. My brother, only a year behind her, would be the heir. Which left me. My parents, I guess, worried for my love life. I caught bits and pieces of several whispered conversations on the topic before I interrupted and told them that I cared nothing for love and would be perfectly happy on my own. 

Being 14, no one believed me. So, as any person who knows everything must do, I ran away to live my own life. I had the secret of the cloth, therefore, I had my fortune. I could go anywhere and be successful and I could do it all on my own. Being 14, I was wrong. 

I was gone for all of two days before I regretted it. I had never traveled outside our village. No one did much except the men who sold the cloth to the cities. I thought I had taken the right road. I hadn’t. At the end of that second day I had not yet left the wood. The road was less and less a road and more and more a trail, I was quickly running out of the food that I brought with me, and my mind was giving each twisted branch and creeping shadow the shape of the monsters of legend. 

Nervousness turned into flat out panic when I saw someone coming towards me on the trail. I screamed and began to fun flat out back towards home and family and safety and away from whatever the hell was ahead. “Wait, stop!” I heard it call behind me and to my horror I did. I froze midstep, tears halted midway down my cheeks, my cries banished to inside my mind as they were suddenly unable to escape my throat. I heard the monster catch up, felt it touch my arm, then saw the face of a boy looking at me in confusion. Not a monster then, after all, but the panic inside me did not stop at this discovery because I still could not move. 

A look of understand dawned on his face and he muttered something I couldn’t make sense of that caused a warmth to spread through me and free my body. I stumbled and part of a cry escaped my mouth before I could stop it. The boy caught me but I jumped back as soon as I regained full feeling in my legs, a few seconds maybe, and drew a small knife from my belt. What it could do against a boy who froze me with words I did not know but I felt better with it in my hands. He held his up in front of him and grinned. He grinned. None of this was funny to me. 

“Going to stab your hero?” He asked me.

I glared, fear still curling deep inside me, “I plan to escape my captor.” I told him, trying to be fierce but I could feel my voice shake. 

He grinned again and snorted at me, “You live in the inside village, yeah?” 

“Inside?” I asked automatically. 

“Here, in the woods, with us.” 

“Us?” I asked aloud while I asked myself inside why I was asking him anything and not continuing to run. I felt nearly as frozen now as I had been before.

“Us wizards, of course. You must know my master, Agnieszka, the witch.” I nodded slowly and he added, “Great! Then must you know that, I, her lowly apprentice, can be trusted.” 

“How do I know you’re her apprentice? I’ve never seen you with her.” I hedged. 

“I suppose you don’t but who else would I be? Here in the woods?” He gestured around us, eyes following his hands, uncaring of the knife I still held between us.  
As much as it irked me, he had a point. “Fine,” I said, letting my blade drop, “My name is Talia, I live in the inside village, as you say.” 

“So, Talia, what are you doing this far into the wood?” He shook my knifeless hand. 

“Doing what all great fairy tale heroines do: running away from an arranged married.” I thought I had managed a careless tone and I was rewarded with his laugh, which was clear and unrestrained. 

“Didn’t think they had those for village girls,” he teased and though I had only just met him, I could tell that jibes like that were pretty much his standard of interaction. We had a few boys like that in the village. The fun ones. I decided I liked this apprentice. Later, I would wonder if he used magic on me to make me put my guard down with him or if it was his honest personality that I was comfortable with. 

I let a feigned offence cover my face for a moment before smiling. “Well then I suppose I should be getting home.”

“Let me show you the shortcut,” he offered, “you’re a day and half out by this path.”

“Two days,” I muttered. 

He laughed quieter this time but no less clear, “Slow, aren’t you?” I punched him in the arm like I would the boys at home and he grinned at me again. 

“I’m not going to take you all the way back,” he explained, “even by this route you’re hours from home and I do have things I am supposed to be doing out here.” 

“Like what?” I asked, genuinely curious about what wizard apprentices did. 

“That is secret wizard business,” he said, and walked a little straighter. 

“Come on,” I begged, “tell me one thing.”

“Fine,” he agreed, “since you asked so nicely,” at that I elbowed him in the ribs, “Ooof! Hey, do you want to know or not?” Nod. “Then be nice,” Nod, “Okay well now that I can do things on my own I go to the less dangerous of the Dark Places and check to see if anything changed.”

“Has it?” I prompted. 

“Never, yet.” he admitted, “but if it does, master Agnieszka will need to know right away. Sometimes change means she can heal a place, sometimes it means the Dragon burns it down.” 

I hummed to show I was still listening and thought about the smoke we had seen rising far off in the woods once. I had been very small but I remembered my parents worrying about spreading fire. How do you stop a blaze from taking a village surrounded by trees? 

“What?” he broke my train of thought. 

“Thinking about fire,” I told him. 

“Oh yeah? Maybe the Dragon will teach you if you have the talent. Agnieszka always finds the ones with talent around here.” 

“I don’t think I’d want to make fire,” I thought about it and shook my head, “No, I’d do something else.”

“You don’t really get a say, the magic kind of chooses you. Or finds you. Or you find it. It’s hard to explain. Anyway,” he gestured at a fork in the road, “that is your trail.”

“Thanks, uh, what is your name? Or should I keep calling you apprentice?” How did I forget to ask him that before?

“Leszek.”

“Well then, thank you wizard apprentice Leszek.” I bowed to him while waving my hands around and got the laugh I was looking for. 

“See you, Talia,” he gave a wave and walked off the path into the wood. 

\----------  
When I got home my parents took just long enough to make sure I was okay before being furious. I had to be within their sight for all waking hours for a month. Which, when you are 14 years old, is a really long time. Another month passed after that and I was convinced I would never see Leszek again. My parents kept paying special attention to which boys I played games with and which girls they played with. I was learning to ignore it. I did kiss one boy one time. At the time, I know because I wrote it down, I would not recommend the experience. Although, there were girls my age who would. My own sister had kissed the farmer’s son Gabe when she was my age and she clearly had a better time than me. Maybe Gabe was just a better kisser than Andrew was. 

Then, in the middle of summer, I walked into my kitchen from the garden to find Leszek sitting at our table. He was talking to my father like they knew each other. Like he had with me, I guess, but he talked in a totally different way.

“Ah, there she is,” said my father. “Quite well, as you can see.” 

“Talia!” he beamed at me and seemed genuinely happy about it, “Agnieszka sent me to make sure you got home safely.” 

“Two months later?” I asked, confused. 

“She sent me as soon as she knew it had happened,” he said seriously. His eyes begged me not to make out loud the obvious connection. 

I did not. Instead I said, “That was very thoughtful of her,” earning an approving nod from my mother, who had followed me inside. 

“Says she’ll come and check on you herself after a while, said the village is due for a visit. She sees the other ones all the time. I guess they need more watching,” he cut off abruptly and I couldn’t tell if he stopped himself from saying something specific or just stopped himself from rambling. 

“We appreciate your assistance in getting her home,” my father said to Leszek.

“Of course, sir,” he replied, “to be honest, it was nice to spend time with someone my own age.” 

My father nodded, “She has free time now, you are welcome to stay and join the other children if your duties allow.” 

“Thank you, sir!” 

He nodded again, “Talia, you are not to leave the village.” 

“Of course, father!” I called to him over my shoulder as Leszek grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door.  
\---------

After that I saw Leszek often. He would show up at my house or on the green in the middle of a game or, once, at my window in the middle of the night. That time, I hit him for waking me up and went back to bed. Most of the time we played with the other kids. Team games of capture the center or a game where we scored points with a throwing disc. A few times, when my parents were away and it was left to my sister to watch me (which she never did) we snuck out into the woods. He would show me plants that only grew wild and take me exploring down hidden trails and deer runs. These were my favorite times. 

“You know,” he said to me once, “I bet you would really like the Dark Places that I check on.”

“Are they scary?” I asked him.

“Not really. They’re more sad. But they look like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Really magic, you know?” he got excited towards the end.

“No,” I dragged out the word, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen magic except when you froze me in place.” 

“But you want to.” It wasn’t a question so I just kept looking at him, hoping what I thought was about to happen, really would. He held out his hands. “Don’t touch,” he warned me, “this is pretty basic but if you’re even a little bit magic your energy could get drawn in.” 

He waited until I nodded and then, right in front of my eyes, vines grew in his hands covered in tiny white flowers. I gasped and looked up at his face. I expected him to be smug over my reaction he looked as excited as I felt. I looked back at the flowers still growing, if more slowly, and the vine winding it’s way towards to the forest floor. I watched for a while and then looked up and saw his eyes still on me. He blushed and, for some reason, I did too. 

I looked back at his hands but the flowers were gone. He noticed a second after i did and shook out his hands. “Got distracted,” he muttered and I wondered by what. “We should head back,” he said at normal volume. 

“Okay, “ I agreed. 

We walked back in silence. It was good that we had not gone far because it was an awkward journey. He came all the way to my front door with me and we stood there for a second. 

Finally I said, “I would like to see the Dark Places. The ones you watch. But how could we? They must be farther away than we could get, right?”

“Nearest one is a three hour walk,” he confirmed. Far too far to get during free time. “We could go at night,” he suggested, “I’ll meet you outside? No throwing boots this time.”

“I didn’t throw any--” I started but he interrupted me.

“Yes you did I had a bump for a week. Agnieszka thought I fell out of a tree.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “One week,” he said, “Goodbye, Talia.” 

“See you, Leszek.”  
\-------

The week dragged by and Leszek didn’t show up once. I knew he said a week but I had thought that was just for the one plan. Not that I wouldn’t see him the whole time. I didn’t sleep at all that night just laid in bed and waited for the sounds of breathing from my family members to slow. 

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get ready for a trip quietly enough to avoid waking anymore. My mother was light sleeper. Getting outside would challenge enough. So in preparation I stored clothes and gear in the garden shed. It was there that i changed from pajamas to travel gear and strapped on the same knife I had threatened Leszek with in spring. It was fall now. I had known him for half a year. He had easily become my best friend. 

I climbed onto the roof of the shed and waited. We had planned to meet just outside the house but here I was less likely to get caught by any family who may happen to wake and look out. Plus, I thought I might be able to catch him by surprise and scare him a little when he showed up. 

In that, I was disappointed. He surprised me by sneaking around and calling up to me, “Talia, come down, let’s go.” I jumped but did not cry out. I climbed down, took his hand, and followed him into the wood. 

I had not been in the woods at night since my run away attempt. Somehow this felt different. Then, I had been on a trail that I had believed was taking me out of the woods. Now, there was no trail and I was going in deeper than I had ever been before towards a Dark Place. I trusted Leszek but that did not fears from whispering inside my head. I must have tensed because he squeezed my hand. “You’re safe with me,” he whispered. 

After his assurance we were silent. He was clearly unafraid and that helped me stay calm as well but it seemed as though it would be wrong to speak. The woods demanded reverence. It made three hours seem an eternity. Long before we reached our destination, I was drooping. I had tried to take a nap, tried to go to bed early, anything to get a bit of sleep in before what I knew was going to be a long night but I had gotten none. I was too excited. Where was the energy keeping me awake now? 

Again, Leszek noticed. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of dry roasted beans. “Here, coffee beans. They’ll keep you awake,” he whispered. The weight of the wood was still upon us. They did. It was an odd sort of awake. Not at all rested but I was awake and moving with a purpose again. 

“Almost there,” he whispered after a while. I strained my senses to see or hear or feel anything but there was nothing. Then there was grey light. Although, light didn’t seem to be the right word. I could see, but it wasn’t light. I caught a movement. Then another, small even more grey moving in the patches I could see through the trees. 

Suddenly Leszek stopped and tightened his grip on my hand to the point of pain. “Don’t move,” he said aloud. Again I was frozen, unable to move even if I had wanted. He tried to release my hand, found he could not, and swore under his breath before unfreezing me. “I don’t know how that happens. It doesn't happen with anyone but you,” he hissed. “But, Talia, I do need you to stay. Don’t go any closer, don’t draw attention to yourself. Back may be safe but,” he broke off and made a quiet angry noise. “Just stay here. I’ll be back.” 

I hadn’t been able to get a word in. I was unsure if I could have spoken anyway. I knew what had happened. That was obvious. The Dark Place was awake. It was what I saw moving in the not-really-light. And I was alone. I felt tears well up in my eyes and frantically held in the sounds that came with them. I would not cry. I could not cry. I could not attract their attention. Whoever they were, whatever lived there. 

I don’t know how long I stood there, watching the movements in the grey. I don’t know when I first saw the eyes or when they first saw me. I know we stared at each other for a long time. I know that it started to move and that I started to move with it, meeting it part way. I know that when met and it stopped and started to move backwards. I did not. I continued to move forward, towards the grey, following the creature into the Dark Place. 

It led me slowly to the base of a tree and gently sat me down at its roots. This thing did not act like a monster. It was kind, tucking me in with a blanket of moss. Allowing me the sleep I had been needing all night. I sighed and let the night take me.  
\--------

The next thing I remember is heat. Too much heat. Burning. I was burning, my branches ablaze my leaves already smouldering and falling around me. I screamed and smoke rushed into my lungs. I heard someone calling for Talia and knew they meant me but only part of me. They wanted to rip away a part of me. I tried to pull my human body further into my trunk. They pulled back, bringing more fire against me until even my roots seemed to burn. Why take a piece of me and kill the rest?

The human piece of me was ripped away and gone was the sense of the tree. I was a piece of what I had been but I was whole. I was in the arms of a man I did not know. My skin still burned from the fire and my lungs from the smoke. I felt cool water run down my throat, heard strange words muttered in my ear, then the night took me a second time.  
\-------

When i woke the second time it was morning and I was myself. I could remember being the tree. I could remember its pain. I was surprised to find none of my own. I was ever more surprised to find that I was in my own bed. Leszek was sleeping half on the floor, half on the bed. The man from last night, the one who had carried me away, sat in a chair next to him. He appeared to be completely absorbed in a book. My head turned to follow the sound of singing in the kitchen. Agnieszka was in my mother’s kitchen. She seemed completely at home there, no at all as if it belonged to a stranger. 

She noticed my gaze and walked over with a mug of tea. “Awake,” she said, “Excellent. It has been a long time since we had to use the magic that saved your life.” She looked fondly at the man, the Dragon, as she said it. 

He looked sternly at the sleeping apprentice. “It should not have been necessary.”

“No,” she agreed with none of the anger that his voice held, “but I am satisfied that she is well and non-contagious. We should let her family back in their home.” She shook Leszek awake. 

He shot up and looked at straight at me, “Talia! You’re okay!” 

“No thanks to you, boy,” said the Dragon. “We are leaving. Now.” He pulled Leszek out the door, ignoring every protest and cry of my name. 

Agnieszka stayed by my side and watched. “Drink the tea,” she instructed. 

I did and asked her, “Will I see him again?”

She gave me a long look before answering and when she did it was only, “We shall see.” Then she walked out the door and was gone. 

I could not follow. I felt healthy but more tired than I ever had in my life. Drinking the tea was a challenge, getting up far beyond my capabilities. So I watched out the window as the three walked together out of my village and, as far as I knew then, out of my life.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to drop by and say hi on tumblr where I am also cakepopart!


End file.
